The Lost Choice by Andy Andrews Read Free Book Online

car. For a moment, his face disappeared.
    â€œItzhak!” Schindler beat his fist on the car. “Are you there?”
    Slowly a hand came out of the hole. It was the hand of Itzhak Stern and in it was the paperweight. As the train began to move, Schindler took it and trotted alongside the train as his friend’s smiling face reappeared.
    â€œI went through the office a last time,” Itzhak yelled over the noise of the train. “I got it for you!”
    â€œThank you!” Schindler said as he ran faster to keep up. “Why do you need it?” Itzhak managed to yell as the train gathered momentum and pulled away.
    Oskar stopped. Before he moved to the automobile that was to be his transportation, he looked at the object in his hand and lifted his eyebrows. Placing it in the left jacket pocket of his gray, double-breasted suit, he shook his head and said, “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

THREE
    DENVER, COLORADO—JUNE
    THE DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE is one of the finest examples of functional academia in the world. Its massive, four-story presence at 2001 Colorado Boulevard is a monument to the centuries of knowledge gathered and filed in the categories of anthropology, zoology, and earth sciences. The museum is also a repository for important historical documents and photographs. These particular items are guarded by an extremely well organized staff known to the outside world as the Library and Archives group.
    Dylan Langford was keenly aware of the power wielded by these people. He had once even baked cookies for them. “Don’t wait until you need Library and Archives to be nice to them,” he had been told early in his career.“It’ll be too late.” He knew from experience that if there was even a tiny harbored grudge, they could turn into the dumbest people on the planet, unable to find anything or answer any question.
    Kendra Harper’s youngest brother, Dylan, had only been at the museum for several months. He was twenty-nine years old and on the fast track with his career. Well over six feet tall and rail thin, his prematurely graying hair and receding hairline gave the appearance of an older man. Dylan cultivated that perception, knowing that the world of anthropology and archaeology was rife with competition in its ranks, and young people in his field were often overlooked for advancement.
    Dylan was now a full-fledged curator of anthropology. Though not the department head, he was free to pursue his own course of study. He was certainly qualified. After receiving his BA from the University of Nebraska, he had earned an MA and finally, his PhD in anthropology from Johns Hopkins.
    His office was not big, but it was nicer than most of the interior “cubbyholes” on the third floor. It was a “cubbyhole” with a nameplate on the door, which, at the moment, was open. The office boasted a wall-sized world map and a huge desk circa 1970-something-or-other. Behind the desk a computer station jutted out from a wall of bookshelves that were filled with research manuals and college textbooks that he hadn’t been able to sell and was too cheap to throw away. His rolling chair was the only one in his office—not counting the folding chair stored behind the door—and often, he gleefully spun like a kid from his desk to the computer station.
    Dylan glanced at his watch and pushed back from his computer as he turned an entire circle in the short distance back to his desk. Almost two o’clock, he thought. He drummed his hands on his desktop. Dylan hated it when people were late. Not that Dorry was . . . yet.
    His sister had called and cleared the way for her next-door neighbor, Dorry Chandler, to make contact. “She’s nice and fun and all that, Dylan,” Kendra had said, “and I love her dearly. But just so you know, she is a reporter, and she has one of those kind of . . . um . . . you know, rabid